greatest efficiency, practically every class of the population of
these islands was subjected to its merciless inroads, if not decimated
by its indiscriminate exactions.

On the very threshold of the century we stumble upon an episode
curiously indicative of the set of the tide. Czar Peter of Russia had
been recently in England, acquiring a knowledge of English customs
which, on his return home, he immediately began to put in practice.
His navy, such as it was, was wretchedly manned. [Footnote: The navy
got together by Czar Peter had all but disappeared by the time
Catherine II. came to the throne. "Ichabod" was written over the doors
of the Russian Admiralty. Their ships of war were few in number,
unseaworthy, ill-found, ill-manned. Two thousand able-bodied seamen
could with difficulty be got together in an emergency. The nominal
fighting strength of the fleet stood high, but that strength in
reality consisted of men "one half of whom had never sailed out of the
Gulf of Finland, whilst the other half had never sailed anywhere at
all." When the fleet was ordered to sea, the Admiralty "put soldiers
on board, and by calling them sailors persuaded themselves that they
really were so."--_State Papers, Russia,_ vol. lxxvii.--Macartney,
Nov. 16-27, 1766.] Russian serfs made bad sailors and worse
seamen. In the English ships thronging the quays at Archangel
there was, however, plenty of good stuff-men who could use
the sea without being sick, men capable of carrying a ship to her
destination without piling her up on the rocks or seeking nightly
shelter under the land. He accordingly pressed every ninth man out
of those ships.

When news of this high-handed proceeding reached England, it roused
the Queen and her advisers to indignation. Winter though it was, they